


A Common Tongue

by abcooper



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:49:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9877817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcooper/pseuds/abcooper
Summary: Kara and Maggie have more in common than they think





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Zennie and Noie for first-reads and advice! <3

“Sorry, I lost count,” Maggie said, bemused. “Was that your 5th or your 6th pizza?”

“It was her 7th,” Alex said, resigned. Kara looked indignant.

Kara’s apartment, with its large windows and clutter was undeniably one of the warmest places Maggie had ever been. Empty pizza boxes were piling up on the side of the table, next to a set of well-used paints. The walls were covered in the kind of quirky upcycled things that Urban Outfitters sold for $49.99 and that Kara had probably genuinely made herself.

“Excuse me, laser vision uses up a lot of energy. Did either of _you_ two shoot the evil alien down with your super laser eyes? No? Then I guess this pizza is mine.” She reached to snag the last piece of pizza off of Alex’s plate and Alex slapped the back of her hand.

“Um, did _you_ pay for any of this pizza? Back off.”

It was nice that Kara had invited Maggie over for sister night. She’d have come even _without_ the anxious puppy eyes that Alex had worn while asking her.

She was _trying_ to feel welcome here. She smiled at the sibling antics and tried to push down the odd mix of wistfulness and resentment as Alex threw a napkin at Kara’s face. The grin on Kara’s face was nothing related to the fierce smile Kara had directed Maggie’s way in the bar the first time they’d met, right after the disastrous kiss attempt.  

It was hard to listen to the way Alex talked about her adolescence, and understand how the two of them had ended up here.

Alex held the plate of pizza up over her head and put a hand in Kara’s face to hold her back from it, cackling delightedly at Kara’s fruitlessly reaching arms.

“Pizza is my happy place, Alex,” Kara whined, and despite all the complications and complexities, Maggie grinned a little.

“Oh yeah? Hey, it’s mine too,” she said, and snagged the slice from behind.

**

Maggie’s aunt Luz was 23 years old and still in school, but she took Maggie in because Maggie had nowhere else to go.

“It’s not what you’re used to,” she said a little awkwardly. “I mean - we’ll get you a real bed, but you’ll still have to sleep in the living room. And I have work and then night classes so I’m basically never here. But I hope you know that you’re welcome for as long as you need, ok?”

“I - thanks,” Maggie answered, embarrassed at how her voice cracked on the single word. Luz put an arm around her in response, and then pulled back when Maggie flinched underneath it.

She didn’t mean to. It was just that the armor she’d managed to put up against the world was so fragile and easily broken, and Maggie knew she was going to need it to last her awhile longer.

She kept going to the same high school, though she would have given anything to transfer and never have to see those people again. Transferring was complicated though, because it turned out that kicking your 14 year old child out of your house wasn’t exactly legal, and her parents still had full control over all the decisions about her, unless Maggie wanted to tell social services exactly where she was and wasn’t living at this point.

That meant that anything involving bureaucracy was a no-go, which meant that Maggie was staying at the same high school for the next 3 years. It also meant that she couldn’t afford to skip class and have somebody call home, even though Eliza Wilke’s friends were in English with her, even though they mouthed the word ‘faggot’ at her every time she walked past them.

It meant she couldn’t punch them out for it either.  

Amidst all of the drama, it seemed petty that the thing Maggie stumbled over the most in the transition was food, but she opened Luz’s refrigerator the first morning and its only contents were an undated container of chinese takeout, two pots of yogurt, and some ketchup.

“Uh…. sorry, I mostly eat - well, crap, honestly. Do you drink coffee? I definitely have coffee,” Luz muttered, coming into the kitchen behind her, and Maggie stayed facing the fridge so Luz wouldn’t see the tears welling in her eyes as she thought, with a pang of longing, of the warm morning routine in her parents’ kitchen when her mom made them all eggs on toast and her Dad kissed her on the forehead on his way out the door.

She’d had no idea that it would be so easy for them to hate her.

She had a yogurt for breakfast, and then later she bought a big lunch to make up for it in the cafeteria and mentally confronted the fact that there were seventeen dollars left in her lunch account, and nobody but her parents could refill it.

She missed half of Biology class to cry in the bathroom, but then she came out and Biology was still there. After school, she went to the library and asked what kind of jobs were available if you were under 16.

None of it was easy, but it did start to even out, in a way. Her parents didn’t just fade away into nothingness like she’d half expected. They were still around, her Dad bought her lunch one Saturday and told her that her mother had been crying every night, and how could Maggie _do_ this to her? How could she be so selfish? They’d be better off if she was dead.

She started having panic attacks every time the phone rang, thinking it might be them. But they refilled her lunch account anyways, and somewhere around the untouchable fury was a gruff comfort in the idea that even if they wished she was dead, they still didn’t want her to starve. But she missed home cooked meals, and she missed sitting around the table every night and knowing it would happen again tomorrow. She missed being taken care of.

She found an after school job babysitting three times a week, which wasn’t a _lot_ of money, but it was enough to buy her own breakfast and dinner and be less of a burden on Aunt Luz, who had already given up her living room and who was regularly fielding phone harassment and shielding Maggie from the brunt of what her parents had to say, Maggie was fairly sure.

There was a good moment when Maggie ordered a pizza and paid for it with her own money for the first time, and Luz got home and grinned at her and said, “you’re a solid roommate, kid,” and grabbed two plates out of the cupboard.

They sat on the couch together with their plates on their laps and put on the new episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and Maggie thought, ‘ _this could be my new normal,_ ’ and missed home a little less.

**

Kara ate _everything_. If there was one thing Alex knew about her new little sister, it was that. This quiet odd wraith had moved into her house, silent and hollow-eyed, and all of a sudden every snack, every jar of peanut butter, every can of beans was empty inside of 48 hours.

She was still losing weight, though. Mom and Dad were exchanging worried whispers about it, and taking Kara to the lab to draw blood - Alex knew they were scared that maybe food on Earth couldn’t meet all of Kara’s nutritional needs. They were looking for some weird vitamin or mineral that they needed to synthesize to keep her biology running smoothly.

Alex was only 15 and she wasn’t a scientist, but she was pretty sure Kara’s issues weren’t biological. The kid was just like - _traumatized_ , or something. She hadn’t done anything for two weeks except silently follow Alex around the house sometimes when Eliza told them to hang out. Otherwise she sat silently on her bed - sometimes there’d be some noise in the distance, a horn honking or something, and Kara would slam her hands over her ears and squeeze her eyes shut, like it was unbearable.

Alex wasn’t a jerk, she felt bad for the kid. But it was uncomfortable to be around her, and it sucked to come home from school everyday and have to be uncomfortable in her own house.

This Thursday, she came home and trudged the short walk from the bus to their front door at a snail’s pace, using the time to gather the tattered remains of her patience. It had been a shit day in ways that she was struggling to fully quantify - ways that had to do with Vicky Donahue making out with her new boyfriend by her locker, and with how Alex felt subtly alienated from everything that was meant to be important to her.

“I’m back,” she called - very quietly, to avoid Kara clapping her hands over her ears - as she came through the door, and then popped a head into the bedroom to check on her new sister, already accustomed to the fact that Kara wouldn’t call out an answer. She breathed a sigh of relief when she found the room empty - Kara must be at the lab with Eliza today, which meant Alex got an hour to herself. Some much needed moping time, if she was being honest.

She went down to the kitchen and rummaged in the cabinets, pulling out a big half-filled jar of chocolate ovaltine. She got her favorite mug out - a delicate one painted with birds that her dad had given her for her 7th birthday, chipped now, and poured milk into it, popping it into the microwave to heat.

Settling into her bed with her hot chocolate, she let out a deep breath that she thought she might’ve been holding in for two straight weeks. T

It wasn’t much longer before she heard a key in the lock downstairs. “Alex, sweetie, we’re home!” Eliza called, and then a minute later, frustrated, “you left chocolate powder on the sink - I’m your mother, not your maid!!” Alex rolled her eyes and turned the volume up a little on her headphones.

Her door was open though, she could still see when Kara trudged past the door into her own little room down the hall. She was going at about the same speed Alex had come around the block from the bus. Her eyes were shadowed, her mouth tilted downward. Whatever might be alien about her, there was no mistaking that Kara was unhappy.

Alex watched her go by. She looked down at her mug - at the familiar chip in the side, and the two cracks that ran through the handle from where she’d dropped it once when she was 11. The handle had broken off and she’d cried, but her dad had glued it back on. She stared thoughtfully at it for a long moment, and then she went down to the kitchen.

“What on earth are you doing?” Eliza asked as Alex pulled a frozen pizza out and dumped it onto a plate. “I’m making dinner…”

“It’s for Kara, not for me,” Alex said. “I thought she could use a snack after having her blood all kryptonite-drawn. Creepy needles all afternoon, definitely needs a pizza follow up. ”

“Oh,” Eliza smiled approvingly. “That’s very nice, Alex. I’m glad you’re starting to look out for her.”

The words rubbed her the wrong way, and for a split second Alex was tempted to say ‘forget it,’ and go back upstairs, but instead she slit the plastic and put the pizza into the microwave for 4 minutes, and set the table without being asked.

On her way past her own room she grabbed the blanket off her bed - not her comforter, but a ridiculously fuzzy electric blue thing that she’d gotten for Christmas last year, and then then she knocked lightly on Kara’s door before pushing it open.

“Hey,” she said casually, and tossed the blanket one handed onto Kara’s lap. Kara started; she caught the blanket on instinct and looked at Alex with wide, puzzled eyes. It was the only splash of real color in the room. Everything else was cream and tan and dark brown wood. This had been the guest room before Kara moved into it and it looked it, utterly impersonal.

“I was thinking,” Alex said, and she hesitated a moment before settling herself next to Kara on the bed. Kara looked utterly alarmed by this dramatic change in behavior, but it didn’t look like it was _hurting_ her, the way so many things did.

“I was thinking,” Alex repeated, “that I had a horrible day today, and when I came home, I got comfort out of all these things that were familiar to me - that have comforted me through every bad day for the past decade, you know? I have this mug, and I have a favorite drink, and a favorite CD that I listen to when I’m sad.”

Kara didn’t talk, but she _did_ understand everything. She listened as Alex talked, her fingers stroking absently over the soft blue blanket in her lap.

“So what I started thinking was that, yeah, obviously you’ve got stuff to be sad about that makes my worst day ever look like a picnic, and we can’t fix that,” Alex continued, “but what you don’t have is anything familiar to hold onto. And I came up with a plan, you wanna hear it?”

Kara nodded, and Alex was almost dumbstruck. That had never happened before - Kara had never answered her before. She didn’t stop and draw attention to it, though. Some instinct told her that that was a bad idea, that Kara was too skittish. She just smiled and kept going, some warm feeling that was a little like triumph growing in her heart.

“Here’s my plan - it’s time for us to make you some new familiar things. So I brought you a pizza to eat,” she brandished the plate in front of her with a dramatic handwave, and Kara, miracle of miracles, took it. “It’s weird and alien now, but I know you like it. And what we’re going to do is, we’re gonna keep making you pizza every time you’re sad, OK? And eventually it’s going to be your comfort food, and when you’re sad you can want it, and we’ll know to bring it to you. And you can curl up in this blanket, because you like soft things. And we’ll just - we’ll keep finding the things you like and making them familiar to you, one at a time, until you have a home again. OK?”

Kara didn’t say anything, just smiled up at Alex tremulously. She picked up a slice of pizza in trembling hands, and Alex sat with her silently while she ate it. Neither of them commented on the tears streaming down Kara’s face, the first ones Alex had seen since Kara came to live with them.

**

They didn’t go home until after midnight - pizza with the Danvers sisters was apparently followed up by ice cream, wine, and at least 3 episodes of whatever was most important on hulu.

“This was fun,” Kara said warmly as she hugged them both goodbye at the door. “Come back any time, Maggie.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Maggie answered easily, and linked her arm through Alex’s as they came out into the cool night air.

“Thanks for coming, really,” Alex said as they walked around the block toward her car. “I know that Kara and I can be kind of a lot….”

“I had fun,” Maggie promised. “Your sister is sweet, I like how much you two love each other. There’s so much history there, getting to know you is going to mean getting to know Kara. And Alex,” she paused them, putting a gentle hand on her girlfriend’s cheek. “I really want to get to know you.”

She knew Alex still felt uncertain about so many things in their relationship - that she felt like one misstep would change Maggie’s mind about her forever. The relationship felt fragile, and that was no good, not when Maggie was pretty sure that she wanted this one to be the one that really lasted.

Alex smiled now, though. “Oh, I have stories,” she agreed, her voice full of the promise of humor. “What do you want to know?”

“What made Kara say that pizza is her happy place?” Maggie asked, because it had been a joke, but it hadn’t _just_ been a joke, and it had struck a chord.

  
Alex laughed a little. “It’s from when Kara first moved in with us,” she started, and Maggie smiled, grabbing Alex’s hand and intertwining their fingers as she listened.


End file.
